Beyond the Mat: Dealing with Anger

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
—Lord Buddha

Before yoga, I had a terrible temper. I’d put fists through walls, kick in doors, and break phones. In those dark days, I blamed the world for my problems.

Once I started practicing yoga, my anger immediately began to dissipate. Instead of lashing out, I learned to look inside for the cause of my problems and saw how anger sabotaged my personal happiness and thwarted my spiritual progress.

The Bhagavad-Gita describes anger as one of the three gates to hell (along with craving and greed), and says it has its roots in attachment and ego.

“The biggest culprit that stands in the way of our developing forgiveness is our ego,” Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj recently told Hi India magazine. “It is the cause of all anger and vengeance. Anger is the ego’s reaction when it is not getting its way. People are so habituated to responding with anger that they think it is normal. They justify it by saying that it is ‘healthy to let out one’s feelings.’

“When others do not live up to our expectations of what we want from them, we express our disappointment with angry thoughts, words, or deeds. What we fail to realize is that the anger weighs us down. When we eliminate it from our system, we can experience God’s love flowing to us. Although God’s love is always there, our feelings of anger and retaliation repel our ability to receive this love.”

The opposite of anger is love and compassion. The Yoga Sutras tell us that “In relationships, the mind becomes purified by cultivating feelings of friendliness towards those who are happy, compassion for those who are suffering, goodwill towards those who are virtuous, and indifference or neutrality towards those we perceive as wicked or evil.”

Fortunately, yoga gives us many other ways to deal firsthand with anger.

Practices

1. Cool off

When in the throes of anger, it is usually best to refrain from immediately expressing it to others. Instead, allow the emotion to cool down until you can act rationally. Swami Sivananda recommends leaving the spot where your anger has overtaken you at once and taking a brisk walk, drinking water, and/or chanting “Om Shanti” ten times. Or take 25 deep breaths, write about what you’re angry about in a journal, go into child’s pose, or do something that has served you in the past. (Unfortunately, most homes are not outfitted with an anger room, like the palace in the Ramayana.) Sheetali, a cooling pranayama (breathing technique), may also help. To practice, push the tongue out and curl the sides in to the center to form a tube. Inhale through the rolled-up tongue. Then pull the tongue in, close the mouth, and press the tongue into the palate. Focus on the coolness held by the tongue as you exhale slowly through the nose. Repeat three to five times.

2. Experience it

When you’ve calmed down, try sitting with the emotion (repressing it and/or immediately expressing it can actually give it more power). Pushing it away with food or drink, or ideas like “yogis don’t get angry” can thicken the ego and make things worse down the road. Instead, be present to the emotion and watch it with the same loving awareness and attention you bring to your physical yoga practice, being patient and nonjudgmental. Notice how it manifests in the mind and body, keeping in mind that these are only sensations that come and go. This practice may feel uncomfortable at first; patience and courage are required.

3. Go to the source

Once the anger has dissipated, practice svadhyaya (self-study) and explore what caused it. According to the Bhagavad-Gita, anger has its roots in attachment. It says that we suffer when our desires aren’t met or we don’t get our way, and that this is the root cause. So, take a moment and reflect upon what it is that is troubling you; is it thwarted desire and unmet expectations? The ego’s desire to control an outcome? Or is it something else? (Learn more about cultivating detachment in my May/June 2015 column: yogachicago.com/2015/05/cultivating-detachment/).

But occasionally we may find that our anger is telling us that a circumstance is unfair, and we must do something to remedy it. If that is the case, use the episode as fuel to come up with a plan and calmly and methodically work towards a more balanced and equitable outcome. You will know you are doing the right thing if the action is rooted in selflessness (i.e., you are doing it to rectify a situation that adversely affects others, not just yourself). If your motive is purely selfish, then any action you take is likely to backfire.

5. Make it right

If you alienated someone with your anger, apologize immediately—without making excuses—and offer a solution. If someone offended you, forgive them. And remember to use the experience as a tool for your own personal growth.

The fact is, unfairness is a part of life and we must learn to let it go. As Mark Manson reminds us in his 2016 book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, “Not everyone can be extraordinary—there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault.”

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Kali Om, E-RYT 500, will lead a Dealing with Anger workshop on Saturday, August 4, and sunrise sun salutations at Lawrence Avenue and the lakefront on Saturday, July 7; a retreat October 20–21 at the beautiful Port for Prayer in Frankfort, Illinois; and a winter yoga vacation February 9–16, 2019, in sunny Belize. She has been teaching yoga since 1998 and is a disciple of Sri Dharma Mittra and the senior teacher of Dharma yoga in Chicago. She studied five times in India with the late Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga master Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. Kali teaches Dharma yoga in Lakeview on Sundays and at East Bank Club, Chicago Athletic Clubs, and DePaul University’s Ray Meyer Center. In addition, she leads workshops and teaches private and workplace yoga. Kali is further certified in Yoga Therapeutics, Psychic Development, Yoga Nidra, Seniors Yoga, Prenatal Yoga, Gentle/Restorative Yoga, Rocket Yoga, and Hormone Yoga Therapy for Menopause and has a master’s degree in journalism. For more information, visit yogikaliom.com, or contact Kali at 773.315.5489 or kali@yogikaliom.com.